Global Temperature Trend Update—April, 2010

Every month University of Alabama in Huntsville climatologists John Christy and Roy Spencer report the latest global temperature trends from satellite data. Below are the newest data updated through March, 2010.

The global-average lower tropospheric temperature continues to be quite warm: +0.65 deg. C for March, 2010. This is about the same as January. Global average sea surface temperatures (not shown) remain high. Go here for the satellite data.

Global climate trend since Nov. 16, 1978: +0.13 C per decade

Part of the explanation for the recent uptick in global average temperatures is that an El Nino has been warming the eastern Pacific ocean for the last few months. See below.

Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time. Report abuses.

My German Shepherd took a shit in the Gulf once. She was on a long tie-out. The water was super shallow (you could walk out twenty feet and still not be knee deep. She walked into the water and just dropped a load for the fishes.

During the last “uptick” (Is that what we’re calling it these days? What happened to “kerfuffle”?) I saw two guys walking near Union Station on a sunny day and overheard one of them saying “I love this El Nino stuff! It’s so much warmer now!”

(I said) It’s gettin’ hot in here (so hot) So take off all your clothes I am gettin’ so hot (uh uh uh uh) I wanna take my clothes off Oh it’s gettin’ hot in here (so hot) So take off all your clothes I am gettin’ so hot (uh uh uh uh) I wanna take my clothes off Yeah yeah come on

It is well-known by now that during the last several decades the number of El Ni?o events increased, and the number of La Ni?a events decreased. The question is whether this is a random fluctuation or a normal instance of variation for that phenomenon, or the result of global climate changes towards global warming.

The studies of historical data show that the recent El Ni?o variation is most likely linked to global warming. For example, one of the most recent results is that even after subtracting the positive influence of decadal variation, shown to be possibly present in the ENSO trend, the amplitude of the ENSO variability in the observed data still increases, by as much as 60% in the last 50 years.

El Ni?o affected pre-Columbian Incas [56] and may have led to the demise of the Moche and other pre-Columbian Peruvian cultures.[57] A recent study suggests that a strong El-Ni?o effect between 1789-93 caused poor crop yields in Europe, which in turn helped touch off the French Revolution.[58] The extreme weather produced by El Ni?o in 1876?77 gave rise to the most deadly famines of the 19th century.[59]

Leaving aside the two El Nino years (’98 and ’10), according to that data, at least, there has been no statistically significant global warming until about 2002 at which point it plateaued at about 0.3 degrees above normal, then started heading back down but got interrupted by a the 2009-2010 El Nino on the way.

I know there are other data sources, but that data by itself is very, very weak support of a global warming trend. It does support a slight global warm period, however.

BTW, what was the cool period around ’85-86 due to? It looks bigger than the Pinatubo cooling to me.